Viscous properties of heavy oil and bitumen create problems with handling of such produced products prior to upgrading at a refinery offsite from a well where produced. Expensive infrastructure and environmental concerns prevent bringing conventional refining equipment, such as hydrocrackers or cokers, to a wellhead for onsite upgrading. Viscosity of the products makes pumping the products through pipelines from the well difficult and expensive.
One approach utilized to facilitate in moving the product through the pipeline relies on blending the product with liquid hydrocarbon condensate. However, the condensate occupies volume within the pipeline and thereby limits amount of the product being transported. Further, expense of the condensate and any return pipelines for the condensate contribute to cost of moving the product.
Various other techniques attempt to lower viscosity of the product by using microwaves to target molecules present within heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs. The microwaves only interact with the molecules that have a dipole moment through a coupling phenomenon. The molecules exposure to an alternating electric field results in the molecules beginning to rotate or reorient in order to follow the field and thereby couple with, or absorb, the microwaves having an appropriate frequency. Sustained reorienting of neighboring molecules, as well as different orientations of dipole moments due to changing of the field, generates heat. These prior techniques employing the microwaves offer limited usefulness due to inefficiency, especially for purposes of upgrading. Further, the heat often results in only a temporary reduction in viscosity that is beneficial for aspects such as initial recovery. Such temperature dependent viscosity reduction fails to enable transport in pipelines where the heat is lost.
Therefore, a need exists for improved processes and systems that use microwaves to produce an upgraded hydrocarbon.